Google might be looking to allow users to discover contacts from their Gmail account in Allo, in addition to the phonebook discovery method that has been in place since the early days of the app.

In a teardown of the latest version of the Allo app package for Android, 9to5Google has come across references to the following placeholder texts which have led to the speculation of the feature:

accept

connect

Hi %s,

Chat with Gmail contacts

Enjoy a seamless experience across Google services

Do more with Allo

Friends can find you by your name, email, or phone number

While contacts discovery using Google Contacts could be an important feature, the messaging app is still likely to rely on the user's ﻿phone number for its registration process.

In addition to the contact discovery features, some of the other changes discovered in the teardown include new admin controls for group chats, contact sharing, camera flash controls, a new long press menu, and new camera effects.

It will be interesting to see whether the new features can bring more users to the platform, which currently faces tough competition from the likes of Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat.